Sparks: An Urban Fairy Tale
I read about this in a librarian's magazine while I was still back in Salina, and thought it sounded interesting, sort of a Pygmalion in reverse. A car-mechanic girl builds her "perfect man" out of spare car parts, and he comes to life. They both learn a bit about love, life, and what it means to be yourself. The cover art looked different, too: not your standard comic-book proportioned women, and a long, droopy-looking robot. Unfortunately, this is one of those "good idea, bad execution" moments. The artwork held up, for the most part, but (like too many comic books I've seen) this one was plagued with bad spelling, misused apostrophes, and typos. I can't understand it. Don't these people have proofreaders? Or at least spell-check? (It would have helped in this case, because all the text seemed to have been done by a computer and not hand-lettered.) Also, the story turned out to be a bit trite, and the characters were very flat stereotypes. I did finish the book, but only because I'm that sort of person; it's not one that you really need to look for.

Fed to jonathan's brain | July 12, 2003